Springsteen Holds To Roots That Nurtured His Music

October 13, 1985|By Robert Hilburn, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

Creative reigns in rock 'n' roll are notoriously brief. Elvis Presley's most influential records were made in the three years that ended with the release of ''Jailhouse Rock'' in 1956. Though he continued to exercise his questioning spirit, Bob Dylan never regained his hold on the rock audience after his motorcycle accident of 1966. The Beatles burned out before the start of the 1970s.

A decade after he was featured on the covers of Time and Newsweek in 1975, Bruce Springsteen was still reaching for his artistic and commercial peak. The most acclaimed figure in American rock by the time his album The River was released in 1980, Springsteen has added to both his art and his audience with his two subsequent LPs. Nebraska, a stark, compassionate look at loss of hope in America, dazzled critics and listeners in 1982. In 1984, Born in the U.S.A. spread Springsteen's hard-times portraits and personal celebrations to a huge new audience.

By the time he and the E Street Band reached Greensboro, N.C., in January 1985, Springsteen was halfway through an international tour that would be seen by an estimated 4 million people. Born in the U.S.A. had sold 5 million copies -- almost double his previous high with Born to Run -- and had just regained the No. 1 position on the national sales charts.

It was Springsteen's first local appearance in four years, and tickets for both shows at the 15,500-seat Greensboro Coliseum had sold out as fast as the box office could collect the money. Fans draped welcoming banners over the balcony rails (''Ooh, ooh, we gotta crush on you'') and shouted his name after almost every song.

For more than three hours, Springsteen performed with an intensity that challenged both his stamina and the audience's ability to absorb. Rather than the narrow range offered in most pop music performances, Springsteen's embraced many styles and emotions from the youthful exhilaration of his Born to Run days to the darker social realism of his recent work.

His fans have always been thrilled by Springsteen's energy and drive, and the Greensboro concert was no exception. But now what they seem to treasure most is his emotional honesty and integrity. ''You can't live on what you did yesterday or what's going to happen tommorrow,'' he said in 1980. ''If you fall into that trap, you don't belong onstage. That's what rock 'n' roll is: a promise, an oath. It's about being as true as you can at any particular moment.''

Bruce Springsteen has always been true to his origins. He finds it hard to shake a sentimental attachment to his hometown -- even though he spent much of his New Jersey school days yearning to get away from places like Asbury Park and Freehold. Familiar streets and faces provide an emotional anchor that can be a useful balance against the pressures of the pop spotlight, and Springsteen values that protective balance.

''One of the things that was always on my mind to do was to maintain connections with the people I'd grown up with, and the sense of the community where I came from,'' he said shortly after the start of the Born in the U.S.A. tour. ''That's why I stayed in New Jersey. The danger of fame is in forgetting or being distracted.''

Most people think of Asbury Park, the seedy beachfront town of the Jersey shore, as Springsteen's hometown. His debut album was called Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., and he often tells stories onstage about the years he spent there, playing clubs and trying to put his rock 'n' roll dreams in place. But Springsteen was born 18 miles away in Freehold, N.J. Both of these central New Jersey towns -- about an hour's drive from Manhattan or Philadelphia -- take pride in their past. Asbury Park once was a thriving resort with luxury hotels and a busy boardwalk. Freehold was the site of an important battle during the Revolutionary War; there's still a museum in town with artifacts from the battle.

There's not as much to say about these towns' futures. You can picture a young Bruce walking along Main Street and out on Highway 9, ducking into the sandwich shop here and the dime store there, daydreaming about the escape that he would eventually glamorize in ''Thunder Road,'' and ''Born to Run.'' But the thing that strikes you about this area now is the emptiness.

''I come from an area where there was not a lot of success,'' Springsteen once said. ''I didn't know anyone who made a record before me. I didn't know anybody who had made anything.''

He also said, ''It was a real classic little town, very intent on maintaining the status quo. Everything was looked at as a threat. Kids were looked at as a nuisance and a threat.''